WAYNE KNUCKLES: I Spent 69 Years Hating Soccer & the World Cup Got Me in a Week

Soccer was never going to be my game.

I was raised on football you could hear. Pads cracking. A band. Somebody's daddy hollering from the top row. Soccer always looked to me like a bunch of fellas chasing a ball around a yard, and every so often one of them would drop like he'd been hit by a sniper, roll four times, grab his shin, then get up and sprint off like nothing happened.

The floppin' game, I called it.

Then they brought the whole circus to our doorstep. The World Cup. Forty-eight teams, three countries splitting it up, the United States and Canada and Mexico hosting the biggest one anybody's ever thrown. Games on the TV every blessed afternoon.

I had nothing else on. A fishing show I'd already seen twice and a recliner that's quit trying to be any shape but mine.

So I clicked over to mock it.

Never got to the mocking.

While we're on a hydration break down on the pitch — and that's a real thing now, they stop the match cold, three minutes a half, hand everybody a water bottle like it's recess and run a truck commercial while the boys catch their breath — let me tell you what got me.

It wasn't the goals. There still aren't many.

It was the wanting. These boys want it so bad it comes through the screen. You watch a fella miss by an inch and fold up like the floor gave out, and you understand it, because once or twice in your life you've wanted something that bad and watched it sail wide too.

Our bunch surprised me first. The U.S. hung four on Paraguay. Four. I sat up. Then they turned around and lost a wild one to Türkiye, three to two, and still walked through to the next round anyhow. Lost the game, won the week. That's about as American as it gets.

Then there was Germany.

You don't have to know soccer to know Germany. They're the Yankees of the thing. They win these tournaments in their sleep, or used to. This year a team from Ecuador knocked them flat, and then Germany packed up and went home early, and a fella on the TV said right out loud that Germany isn't a soccer superpower anymore.

Imagine being that good for that long. Then waking up ordinary. Remind you of any team you know?

And it kept going. Morocco beat the Netherlands on penalty kicks — those gut-twisting one-on-ones where a whole country's summer rides on one swing of a foot. Little Cape Verde, a fistful of islands most of us couldn't find on a map, still alive and dancing while the giants fold their tents.

There's a big golden-haired fella named Haaland who scores goals for a living over in Norway.

France ran a man named Dembélé out there and he put three past them by himself and sent Haaland home to think about it.

Even the giants get got. I've always been a sucker for that story.

Somewhere in the second week, Kay walked through the front room and caught me on my feet, hollering at a ball.

A ball.

This from a man who needed the little score box just to tell which team was which.  Who still can't explain the offside rule. There I was. Up out of the chair. Sweet tea sweating a ring onto the side table, knees reminding me I'd stood up too fast.

She didn't say a word. Just grinned and kept walking. She's watched me get religion over dumber things.As this is being written, our boys are preparing to play Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country that must be so good they named it twice. I'd have fumbled to find it on a map a month ago, Now I can tell you they  field a stout side. I'll be in the chair. Tea poured. Knees up.

I spent the better part of seven decades sure this game wasn't for me.

Took about a week to find out I was just a fella who hadn't watched it yet.

Wayne Knuckles has edited and published newspapers in Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia. He currently publishes a free weekly newsletter about Appalachian history, news, food and travel. You can sign up for free at www.thewaynetrain.com.